Research Catalog

Stray wives : marital conflict in early national New England / Mary Beth Sievens.

Title
Stray wives : marital conflict in early national New England / Mary Beth Sievens.
Author
Sievens, Mary Beth.
Publication
New York : New York University Press, c2005.

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Description
xii, 171 p.; 24 cm.
Summary
"Hundreds of provocative notices ran in New England newspapers between 1790 and 1830. These elopement notices - advertisements paid for by husbands and occasionally wives to announce their spouses' desertions as well as the personal details of their marital conflicts - testify to the difficulties that many couples experienced, and raise questions about the nature of the marital relationship in early national New England." "Stray Wives examines marriage, family, gender, and the law through the lens of these elopement notices. In conjunction with legal treatises, court records, and prescriptive literature, Mary Beth Sievens highlights the often tenuous relationships among marriage law, marital ideals, and lived experience in the early Republic, an era of exceptional cultural and economic change."--BOOK JACKET.
Subject
  • Marital conflict > New England > History > 18th century
  • Marital conflict > New England > History > 19th century
  • Wives > New England > History
  • Husband and wife > New England > History
  • Legal advertising > New England > History
Genre/Form
History
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (p. 121-162) and index.
Processing Action (note)
  • committed to retain
Contents
Introduction -- A "disobedient, clamorous" wife : the problem of wifely submission -- "A trifling sum" : economic support and consumer spending in New England marriages -- "The duties of a wife" : the meaning of women's work -- "The wicked agency of others" : community involvement and marital discord -- "Having confidence in her own abilities" : coping with estrangement -- "Free and clear from all claims" : divorce and the contradictory nature of women's status -- Afterword: Settling "all matters of dispute" : marital conflict, negotiation, and compromise.
ISBN
081474009X (cloth : alk. paper)
LCCN
  • ^^2005010577
  • 9780814740095 (cloth : alk. paper)
OCLC
59279868
Owning Institutions
Harvard Library